Reginald Barclay

Notes

A talented engineer, Lieutenant Barclay was nevertheless a deeply shy and introverted person. He compensated for this by engaging in fanciful holodeck programmes where he would work out his frustrations on caricatures of his shipmates. Unfortunately, this practice gradually became more and more addictive for Barclay and as a result his work suffered. Unable to deal with his constant lateness and poor work, his Captain on the USS Zhukov gave Barclay an excellent recommendation in an attempt to have the problem transferred off the ship. Barclay went to the Enterprise-D, where he continued to live out his fantasy life at the cost of his work.1

While on the Enterprise, Barclay's superiors discovered what he had been doing in the holodeck. He agreed to submit to therapy with Counselor Troi, and gradually weaned himself away from the worst aspects of his problem and increased his self confidence a little.1

Although addicted to one aspect of modern technology, Barclay was terrified of another; he suffered from a debilitating fear of the transporter. He went his whole Starfleet career without using a transporter once, until in 2369 the Enterprise-D was assigned to investigate an accident on board the USS Yosemite. Barclay refused to take part in the away team as it would have involved transporting to the ship. He managed to control his fear enough to use the transporter but when he observed what appeared to be a life form within the transporter beam, Barclay became convinced that he was suffering hallucinations as a result of transporter psychosis, a rare condition experienced by some users of the technology in its early days.2

Barclay forced himself to re-enter the transporter and grabbed the life form he had seen before. When he rematerialised he found himself clutching a member of the missing Yosemite crew, who had been thrown into subspace by an accident on the ship. The Enterprise-D crew were subsequently able to rescue the remaining members of the crew from subspace.2

His hypochondria recurred in 2370, when he became convinced he was suffering from Terellian Death Syndrome. Dr. Crusher diagnosed a mild case of urodelean flu and injected a synthetic T cell to fight the infection. Unfortunately, the treatment caused some of Barclay's introns to mutate and infect the rest of the crew, causing them to 'de-evolve' into earlier forms. The condition, which became known as Barclay's Protomorphosis Syndrome, was eventually cured and the crew returned to normal.3

Barclay transferred off the Enterprise-D before it was lost, moving to Jupiter Station to assist Dr. Zimmerman in the development of the Emergency Medical Hologram project. Barclay worked on the EMH's interpersonal skills, which may provide at least a partial explanation of the program's unpopularity with its patients.4In 2372 he briefly joined the Enterprise-E, where he served during the Borg attack on Sector 001. He achieved one of his great ambitions by meeting Zefram Cochrane, the inventor of warp drive, when the ship travelled back in time to 2063.5

Barclay subsequently became fascinated with the story of the USS Voyager's struggle to return to Earth from the Delta Quadrant and by 2376 he had left the Enterprise-E to join the Pathfinder project which was attempting to contact the lost Starship. To assist in his efforts, Barclay created a holographic representation of Voyager and its crew. Unfortunately it seemed that his holoaddiction began to recur as he spent more and more time in the program. When Barclay became convinced that the close approach of a pulsar to the MIDAS array would allow him to open up a wormhole to Voyager, his superior at the project was unconvinced. Barclay's increasingly desperate attempts to convince him merely made it appear that he was undergoing a nervous breakdown. Barclay broke into the facility and attempted to establish contact against orders, evading a security team just long enough to get a weak reply from the stranded Starship. With the success of his efforts, Barclay was reinstated and given permission to pursue the technology. This allowed regular contact with Voyager for a brief period each month.6

Barclay continued his work on Pathfinder, helping the Voyager EMH when he was transmitted from Voyager to the Alpha Quadrant to assist in the treatment of his creator, Doctor Zimmerman.7Later Barclay tried to send a hologram of himself to Voyager, but this attempt failed due to the interference of some Ferengi who were trying to kidnap Seven of Nine in order to steal her nanoprobes.8